TOWNSHEND — Susanna Toby Huzzy, her husband James Huzzy, and their children moved to Townshend from Massachusetts.
According to the census of 1810, 15 blacks lived in Townshend. Historian and author Dr. Elise A. Guyette believes it's likely the Huzzys were one of these families.
Toby was born in Maine in approximately 1750. Huzzy was likely born in Massachusetts in approximately 1734. He was enslaved in Upton, Mass. The couple married in Upton in 1776.
According to Guyette's research, there are no records detailing the births of the couple's children. It is likely Toby gave birth to one child approximately 10 months after the start of the Revolutionary War.
Huzzy was 42 when he entered the Revolutionary War. He spent most of the war away from Toby and was a private in the 1st Massachusetts Continental Line.
A veteran of the battles of Lexington and Bunker Hill, he served two terms “as a substitute for his master's sons.” Huzzy served a third time under his own name until the end of the war as a plan to gain his freedom.
According to the pension application Huzzy filed, he enlisted in the spring of 1775 after George Washington arrived in Boston. Some of the officers Huzzy served under included Capt. Miller, Capt. Brewer, and Col. Joseph Vose.
He was honorably discharged in 1783.
Huzzy applied for his pension in 1818. The pension application was filed in Townshend.
According to Guyette's research, Huzzy, approximately 84-years-old, described himself in his pension application as “destitute of property and dependent on the town for support.”
The government granted him his pension.
In 1820 the Huzzy household listed five People of Color.
Huzzy died March 11, 1822.
Records from 1830 list Toby as living in Townshend in a household with three blacks. She applied for Huzzy's pension in 1836. The application was granted and she started receiving the pension the following year.
The census of 1840 listed Toby as living with a black female age 24-35.
Toby turned 100 in 1850. By then the census lists her as living in Townshend in the household of Philimon Holden, 44, farmer and father of four children ages 2 to 11.
Guyette's research also showed that Toby petitioned for “bounty land” when she was 104.
According to the National Archives and Records Administration, the government provided Bounty-Land Warrants for Military Service to veterans of the Revolutionary War, War of 1812, the Mexican War, and a variety of actions against First Nations peoples.
Toby died in 1855.